Mohammad Jehad Ahmad is a veteran New York City public high school mathematics teacher and doctoral student in the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center’s Urban Education program. He is a Palestinian-in-diaspora in the United States. His families hail from the villages of Lifta and Qazaza, both of which were depopulated and ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948.

With over a decade of classroom experience, Mohammad’s research is deeply rooted in his own experience as a public school student and teacher. His academic work investigates how students navigate adult-imposed behavioral expectations, specifically focusing on “pedagogical refusal” as a sophisticated form of student agency rather than mere noncompliance. He advocates for shifting the educational narrative away from pathologizing student behavior and toward understanding the strategic, deliberate decisions students make to protect their identities and sociality. Mohammad has previously published work on education equity and justice in the progressive online news outlets City Limits and Mondoweiss.

Fatemeh Almasarweh is a Palestinian-Jordanian doctoral student pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Justice. Her research examines academic freedom and explores how leaders in U.S. higher education navigate crises during geopolitical conflicts. Having earned her bachelor’s degree in cellular biology and a master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences, with an emphasis in neuropharmacology, she has taught biology as an adjunct instructor at local community colleges for over a decade.

Nicole J. Auffant, Ph.D., (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Associate and Research Lab Manager for the Visual Studies in Education (ViSE) Lab at Rutgers University-Newark. As an activist scholar, she employs critical race feminist and decolonial lenses in her work, believing that scholarship should prioritize the voices and stories of its participants. Much of her research involves working with youth through participatory action research, centering their experiences to drive meaningful change.

Caellum is a lifelong New Yorker and public school English Teacher whose early years of teaching have been deeply inspired by activism for justice for Palestine. Other interests include liberatory pedagogy, direct democracy and ecology in education, poetry, gardening, music, warm communities, and the practical practice of building utopias.

Rachel Duff is an educator, organizer, and current PhD student in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a former educator of English for emergent multilingual students her research interests include analyzing the intersections of gender and labor/class for teachers/teacher unions in the South. She is a rank-and-file, strike ready member of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC).

Gabrielle Figueroa (she/her) is a doctoral student in urban education at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, a student leader, and researcher supporting equity-oriented interventions in teacher education programs across the CUNY university system. Her own work interrogates the weaponization of equal opportunity in U.S. courts with a particular focus on a current lawsuit taking place in New York over admissions to the elite, but public, specialized high schools.

Rubén González is employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction at the University at Buffalo. He earned his PhD in Race, Inequality, & Language in Education from Stanford University. His research examines how K-12 students and teachers of Color develop, sustain, and enact a critical sociopolitical disposition in classroom, school, and broader community settings. A first-generation college student, Rubén earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University, Sacramento, after transferring from Hartnell College with an Associate of Arts in General Studies.

Haia Z. Haidari is a Ph.D. student at The Ohio State University in the Department of Teaching and Learning, in the Critical Studies in Education: Race, Justice, and Equity program. Her research interest is in understanding how Afghan American meaning making and third spaces impact ethnic identity of young women. She received her M.A. in Education and Secondary Teaching Credential in English Language Arts from Stanford University. Haia then taught high school English Language Arts for two years in Dublin, California working with students across various grade-levels. She holds a B.A. in Politics and Theology from Saint Mary’s College of California.

Amar Halak (she/her) is a 19 year old student in her second year of college. She’s majoring in Social Media & Public Relations with a minor in Arabic Studies.

Yasmeen Jaghama is an 8th grade student and artist in New York City.

Kevin Kudic (he/they) is a second-generation USian from parents of the Peruvian and Bosnian diasporas. His interests and research focus on memory, resistance, and knowledge in diaspora communities. Currently, he is a teacher-activist at CUNY.

Dr. Nina M. Kunimoto chairs the sociology and diversity studies departments at Edmonds College in Seattle, Washington and teaches at Spark Teacher Education Institute in Vermont. Her research interests include social theory and education, liberatory and revolutionary pedagogy, and pedagogies of social movements.

Maryam Marey (she/her) is a 19 year old college student majoring in Psychology with a minor in Justice and Family Studies. She hopes to use her degree to help her community and those in need.

Zalykha María is an educator and writer. The daughter of immigrants from Afghanistan and El Salvador, she has dedicated her career to working with multilingual communities with a focus on equity. She is and always will be searching for words.

Lynnette Mawhinney, Ph.D. (she/her) is Professor of Urban Education at Rutgers University-Newark. She is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Africana Studies. She is an award-winning author and scholar of six books. Dr. Mawhinney’s research focuses on retention and recruitment of teachers of Color and diversity, equity, and inclusion practices of K-12 urban schools.

The Newark Solidarity Coalition (NSC) Study Group is a committee of NSC members who have developed political education for their group, which they have defined as, “the collective study of power and revolution that draws upon the lessons of past and present movement work–our own and others’–to clarify and develop goals and strategies for our ongoing organizing.”

Carmen Petit is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) with a focus on contemporary Indigenous art. She is an artist assistant for Klamath Modoc artist Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, and an independent author.

Roula S. is an interdisciplinary organizer from the SWANA region working with migrant, refugee, and diasporic communities on movement building, and a co-founder of several transnational feminist collectives. She has one award winning novel in Arabic.

Mikaela Simms is a social justice educator. She works with teachers and she taught middle school with an emphasis on questioning the world as it exists. In her current roles she focuses on humanizing every situation and making connections across disciplines and other dividing lines. “Our job as educators is to be curious about every human, student and colleague. It is through deep inquiry that we learn about ourselves and the equitable world we wish to build.”

Sabina Vaught is the 2025-26 Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor at Macalester College. She is professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh.

Casey Philip Wong, PhD., is an Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. He aims to advance justice by interrogating systems of coloniality, carcerality, and oppression in education through critical feminist, anti-colonial, and abolitionist frameworks, and by investigating and developing culturally sustaining and strength-based pedagogies to teach and learn otherwise. Dr. Wong researches and collaborates with communities to affirm, foster, sustain, and revitalize educational institutions and relations that critically center overlapping and interconnected African/Black, Indigenous, Latinx/a/o, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. This work is reflected in his 2023 edited volume with H. Samy Alim and Jeff Chang, Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures, as well as his forthcoming book with Teachers College Press, Gathered by Heart: Love as Pedagogy for Collective Liberation.

Anisa Yudawanti (she/hers) is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Drawing on her experience as a community-based youth worker and high school social studies teacher, her research moves us to consider what studies of space and movement can bring to bear on our understanding of schools. Her scholarship sits at the intersections of education studies, Black and critical geographies, and abolition and carceral studies. She situates her inquiry in the Midwest and the Bay Area.